Customer Reviews

Living Large in Small Spaces: Expressing Personal Style in 100 to 1,000 Square Feet

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I recently moved into a <600-sf house with my husband and 33-lb dog. My decorating skills are very minimal, and I end up doing most of my shopping at IKEA. And so it was a pleasant surprise to find this book, which I came across while browsing in the interior design section of a bookstore.

Of course, I had to force myself to pull it out and look at it, since I've been so immensely disappointed by almost all of the books on the subjects of "small" spaces (probably because most of these books define small as 1,000 to 1,999 sf) and since I'm interested in more than just pretty pictures.

Lo and behold, this book, which is largely wonderfully detailed photos of real people's real small spaces (including a 100-sf dorm room and 2 couples with babies living in less than 500 sf), is inspiring in the most practical sense of the word. It's reassuring just to know that other people in the universe reside in sub-1000-sf quarters.

While it is true that many of the featured small-space livers are artists/designers of some sort, with skills that the average Jane doesn't have, I see it less as a book whose ideas you'd want to copy and more of a book whose ideas you'd want to emulate, and I quickly found several good ideas I could apply to my own spaces. Plus, I'm not even half-done just going through it and absorbing the minutiae of each photo and each apartment.

The best part(s)? No fancy-schmancy lofts (with the exception of one converted factory space) and no excessive and gratuitous photos of Wolf ranges and Miele dishwashers.

I couldn't find it used, but I can't feel too much regret about buying it for full price.

I am enjoying this book immensely, unlike the four to five others I've picked up on this subject.

The apartments featured are very realistic - none of that "image expanding" so popular in decorating magazines like METROPOLITAN HOME or DWELL. Tiny spaces do indeed look their size - and that is a GOOD thing! It means we're not being sold a bill of goods by having the eye tricked with photography.

I appreciate the very quirky nature of the design of each of these highly individualized spaces. I appreciate even more the fact that they are grouped by square footage and start at the walk in closet size! <S>

There are many many highly usable and accessible decorating ideas on these pages.

The one fault of this book (and it's a minor one but worth mentioning): very many of the people profiled in the pages use their very small spaces as tricked out 'hotel rooms' rather than full time living quarters. This might not seem to matter until you realize one gentleman rehabbed his kitchen but didn't include an oven of any kind. How many of us can live like that full time? Several people have their places done up as glorified bedrooms w/ the beds on full time display. One or two others have complicated Murphey beds, one on pulleys from the ceiling. While fairly commonplace in New York proper these beds are expensive to duplicate almost anywhere else in the country and are key to several decorating schemes.

Other than these few problems I would highly recommend this book to anyone to learn some ingenius ways of solving small or quirky or differently arranged space problems!

This may be the best book out there right now on dealing creatively with small spaces. Most of the others I have seen feature gorgeous Manhattan or European lofts, or are the homes of architects and designers. They are eye candy, but not much help.

This book is quite inspiring, however. It's unfortunately short on sources, giving only a brief list of featured designers at the back, but the pictures are clear and the little accounts that go with them are written by the people who actually live in the apartments and they offer some useful ideas. And when a book acknowledges that some of us do live in less than even 1,000 feet, that's a book that's operating on a level of reality I can appreciate, because I live in 544 feet. Some of the apartments in the book are much smaller. I finally feel a little validated.

Another thing I like about it is that it's not a coffee-table- book size: it's manageable to hold and look through, even standing up. It is organized by size, from smallest to largest.

Definitely worth a look.

I love this book! There are a number of inventive solutions that don't require hiring a contractor. We've already used some ideas from the book and all we did was rearrange some furniture and paint a wall and a couple of ceilings. This book is truly inspiring if you are struggling with a small, bland space. I've been recommending it to all of my friends and clients who are living in small apartments.

Il y a beaucoup d'images ou d'idées pour les petits espaces. Il y a plusieurs style d'appartements pour les styles "veilliot", rénové et loft.

This book has lovely pictures and good information; but the problem I found with it is that it is not the how-to for living in small spaces that I was looking for.

Several of the homes are more art project than living space. I agree with a previous reviewer who noted that few of houses seemed inviting, comfortable, or very functionable for every-day life.

If you are a student, as I am, looking for a practicle guide to living in a small area, such as a dorm or first apartment, this book is of little use. If you have the time, money, ambition, and know-how to redesign your small living-space, this book may offer some good ideas.

The first problem with this book, is that the pages measure 6.5 by 8.5. making it feel like a small telephone directory. The photographs show portions of rooms that are simply too miniscule to appreciate; the context in which they are situated is not displayed. I found myself frowning a lot and feeling somewhat baffled.
Also, I question the relevence of including close-ups of flowers, or fruit, or a long blank wall with a tiny window at the end of it. It's very irritating. Also, most of these homes are apartments which feature ultra-contemporary furnishings - cupboards with no knobs, couches that look like surf boards, etc. Only a few of the homes could be described as cozy and inviting and they were the best pictures, in my opinion.
Ultimately, the smallness of the pictures ruined it for me - I hate having to squint at a photo. A better book is the New Decorating Book (2002, I believe) by Better Homes & Gardens. A true feast for the eyes.

I have a confession to make. One of the 33 small homes in this engaging volume is my Neutra apartment, perceptively described by a former editor of Metropolis magazine (who kept her sanity by leaving) and brilliantly shot by Radek Kurzaj, a young Polish photographer. Bias aside, I found this to be the standout in a crowded field of books proclaiming that small is beautiful, even as many Americans are pigging out. Ours is an age of obscene excess, and it's refreshing to see how well one can live in a space half as large as mine, and a small fraction the size of mega mansions shoehorned into the Westside. The book is more about lifestyle than design, but every residential architect and interior designer could learn a lot from this varied mix of homegrown decor, which substitutes poetry and practicality for pretension. (Michael Webb is the book reviewer for LA Architect magazine.)

This is far and away the best decorating book for small spaces I've read. It's 400 pages, with 400 photographs, and it explores 33 small homes from 100 to 1,000 square feet. My favorite aspect of this book is that the spaces presented are in the United States. I have found that most small spaces shown in specialty books are from Europe or Asia and so lots of the ideas don't translate too easily. The apartments/homes are presented in order of size. Each home contains a very readable description pointing out a wide variety of design ideas, decorating techniques and how each tenant achieved what he/she wanted in a home despite it's limitations. I'm so pleased I bought this book!

As a studio apartment dweller, I'm drawn to books on living well in small spaces. I've found that many are aimed at those who own their own space and have unlimited budgets. While some of the apartments featured in this book clearly fall into that category, others are a bit more realistic, focusing on the renter who doesn't have the ability to knock out walls and raise ceilings. More of a 'this is what this person's apartment looks like' than a how-to or suggestion guide, I still picked up some good tips that will translate to my apartment. Many of the apartments featured do seem to lean more toward the modern look; FYI if you know that's not your thing.

I gave the book five stars because I think it does very well what the title suggests: it offers good photographs of different living spaces sized 100 sq feet to 1000.